The contradictions of peace

In the space of a few days, Colombians received the visits of King Felipe VI and António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. The two expressed their unrestricted support for the Peace Accords, to the satisfaction of many of us, but Guterres' visit also had other aspects that speak well of the problems we face. The Secretary General participated in an act to commemorate the signing of the Final Agreement, celebrated the commitment of the demobilized, listened to a choir made up of children of the signatories sing and visited the Fragmentos space, whose floor is made with the material of the rifles fused from the guerrillas. The floor slabs were manufactured, at hammer point and under the direction of the artist Doris Salcedo, by women who were victims of sexual violence during the conflict.and with some of them, as I read in the newspapers, the secretary general spoke.

The commemoration ceremony took place at the headquarters of the Special Justice for Peace, an institution born of the agreements whose mission is to judge the crimes committed during the war by all its actors: guerrillas, paramilitaries, members of the Army. Guterres's words had many on edge, as people wondered if the secretary was referring to the letter that had been found upon his arrival in Colombia. It had been left to him by the leader of the ruling party: that he is not the current president, oddly enough, but the former president Álvaro Uribe, who has been out of power for 11 years and is still there, every time we wake up, like the Monterroso dinosaur . The spirit of the letter can be understood with just one of its phrases: "There has not been a peace agreement." In the rest of the document,Uribe accuses the agreements of provoking impunity, raising the permissiveness of drug trafficking to constitutional status and creating an alternative Criminal State. His words navigate between hypocrisy and delirium, but it had to be seen what credit Guterres gave them.

The secretary never referred to the letter or to former President Uribe. His defense of the agreements had the flavor of the final. "The signing of the Peace Agreement generated hope and inspiration in Colombia and in the world," he said. "After more than five decades of conflict and suffering, we have a moral obligation to ensure that this peace process is successful." Later, before President Iván Duque and a group of journalists, he gave an unqualified eulogy of the agreements, urged the Government to take advantage of this “historic opportunity” and “advance in the implementation”, and ended by asking for “the full cooperation of all with the entities of the transitional justice system and respect for their independence ”. In everything he was right, but in particular in the latter: because those entities, the Special Justice for Peace and the Truth Commission,they are the ones that most frequently suffer attacks from the ruling party: just read Uribe's letter. Regarding the words of the former president, the current one has kept an obedient and restrained silence, and in front of Guterres he limited himself to receiving the praise.

But everyone knows that the government's relationship to peace is ambiguous at best. In reality, the great problem with the agreements, or with their complete and successful implementation, is the curious schizophrenia of the ruling party. Their most influential figure constantly attacks them, often with lies and always with distortions, refusing to acknowledge the institutions they have produced, and other party members deny the discoveries of transitional justice: some have even argued that the infamous and already famous

(extrajudicial executions of civilians who were later presented as guerrillas) are nothing more than an invention of the left. To head the Historical Memory Center, in whose archives a good part of the documentary history of the armed conflict rests, the Duque Government chose a man known for denying the very existence of the armed conflict, with which we find ourselves before the contradiction of a group that denies the existence of the conflict, but also the agreements that ended it: because "there has not been a peace agreement."

Meanwhile, Duque acts as if he were dedicated body and soul to the implementation of peace: "peace with legality", the name he has given to his government's campaign.

As anyone can see, except for cases of downright naivety, the slogan hides the suggestion that there is another illegal peace: the one that existed when Duque took office.

But the true defense of the accords - which has earned him so many slaps on the back from international leaders - would be to disavow or contradict Uribe's words.

And I don't know why, but I don't think I will.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

is a writer.

His latest novel is

Sign in to continue reading

Just by having an account you can read this article, it's free

Sign upLogin

Thanks for reading EL PAÍS